Sitting in the venue, Lin Qi could feel more and more eyes gathering on him.

The Mercenary Corps that had participated in the Si’s Twin Towers incident had been feeling rather gloomy these past few days.

The Si’s Twin Towers had fallen, yet there was still no sign of the Si Clan’s heir.

The Liu Clan’s heir was even more mysterious; there wasn’t a single scrap of news about them.

Greenfield City was still enveloped by the Iron Curtain System, making it impossible to leave. To make matters worse, the jobs in the city were a real pain to deal with.

Many Mercenary Corps had already given up, treating this trip to Greenfield City as a vacation and starting to binge-spend in the city’s commercial district.

However...

The liveliest spot in the commercial district, the Formula Dogfight Vehicle Racetrack, had been wiped out by Lin Qi in one fell swoop and was now closed for maintenance.

Even their most thrilling form of entertainment—gambling—was gone.

The mental state of the numerous Mercenary Corps members had started to undergo a few... peculiar changes.

It was at this exact moment that the Liu’s Heavy Industry Branch suddenly announced a new executive president—a young man with the surname Liu, no less.

They might as well have slapped the words "I am the Liu Clan’s heir" right in the center of a promotional poster to give Liu Yue his big debut.

Every Mercenary knew something was fishy, but who could resist coming to watch the show?

If some fearless soul actually made a move, these spectating Mercenary Corps wouldn’t mind stepping in to steal the kill.

After all...

What if it was real?!

What if the Liu Clan heir had actually lost his mind?!

What if, just by chance, they managed to complete the Black Market bounty? This trip to Greenfield City would have been well worth it.

Everyone was thinking along the same lines, and as a result, the eyes of nearly every faction in Greenfield City were locked onto Liu’s Heavy Industries.

After so many days, they were all back on the same high perches, gazing at the Liu’s Heavy Industry Branch building that stood beside the fractured remains of Tower B of the Twin Towers.

Under this sea of stares, Liu Yue strode onto the stage with a determined gait and a perfectly blank expression.

Beside Lin Qi, Liu Weicai, a Liu Clan member who knew pitifully little of the truth, praised, "As expected of an outstanding figure from our Liu Family’s younger generation. His walking posture is simply textbook!"

’Textbook posture?’

’It is pretty textbook, I guess.’

’If I didn’t have Spiritual Vision, if I hadn’t seen the simple, concealed Exoskeleton fixed to Liu Yue’s body, and if I hadn’t seen the "Omni-Directional Gait Protocol (Standard Edition)" chip installed in its interface, I’d also be praising his guts.’

’To know you’re a target and still walk with such swagger.’

The branch’s senior executives were eager to show Liu Yue respect. The moment he came to a stop, they burst into a collective round of applause.

Lin Qi was among those applauding, but he kept his Spiritual Vision active, remaining on high alert.

Was Lin Qi preparing to make a move?

Not at all. Lin Qi was just preparing to follow Liu Xuan’s instructions: the moment danger appeared, he would find a suitable way to play dead.

Lin Qi predicted that the average Mercenary Corps probably wouldn’t make a move.

The factions that would actually move against the Liu Clan would undoubtedly be the Si Clan or the Round Table Conference.

Especially the Round Table Conference. Their entire purpose was Witch Hunting.

’Using a Wizard’s Ability right in front of the Round Table Conference?’

’That’s just asking for a death sentence.’

Lin Qi could only hope this incident wouldn’t provoke a Tier Three Extraordinary from the Round Table Conference into action.

’According to Guang Ling, starting today, those Tier Threes from the Round Table Conference were supposed to be on... vacation?’

’They wouldn’t show up at the venue, right?’

...

Just as Lin Qi’s mind was racing, the various mercenaries watching from the sidelines began to stir.

All the mercenaries’ eyes turned toward the sky.

There, in the sky over Greenfield City, shrouded by the Iron Curtain, an ancient, familiar-looking aircraft was in flight.

The scene was somewhat familiar, as if it had just happened not long ago.

Even the aircraft’s model and paint job were identical!

The fuselage bore the logo of the "Greenfield City Aviation Museum."

The only difference between this aircraft and the one that had crashed into the Twin Towers was the logo’s placement: this one was on the left side of the fuselage, while the other had been on the right.

One could imagine that the two aircraft might have once been displayed side-by-side in the museum, one on the left and one on the right.

The onlooking mercenaries began to whisper among themselves.

"Another plane stolen? Is this how the Si Clan manages Greenfield City?"

"Seriously, one was just stolen a few days ago, and now it’s happening again?"

"You don’t think the Si Clan felt salty about their own Twin Towers getting hit, so they deliberately let someone take a plane to crash into the Liu Clan’s building, do you?"

"Hiss... that actually makes a lot of sense."

What the mercenaries didn’t know was that this wasn’t a case of the Si Clan letting things slide.

In fact, the plane had been deliberately parked on the runway of the Greenfield City Aviation Museum, filled to the brim with vintage jet fuel, just waiting for someone to come and fly it.

As all the mercenaries watched, the aircraft drew closer and closer to the Liu’s Heavy Industry Branch building.

"Where are the interceptor missiles? Why aren’t there any?"

"When the Twin Towers were hit, they at least launched interceptors. Sure, the powerhouse on the plane took out the missiles, but at least Greenfield City’s defense systems were working." 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

"You don’t think the Si Clan is flying that thing, do you? Are they dead set on giving their allies a taste of their own medicine?"

"An eye for an eye... applied to their own ally. How generous."

The mercenaries were all confused, but none had yet considered the possibility that the Si-Liu Alliance had shattered.

In the Asian Administrative Region, the alliance between these two clans was like the "1" and the "0" in the Eastern Alliance’s famous metropolis, Yu Chuan City—the two were considered utterly inseparable.

...

Inside a Liu Clan safe house, Liu Xuan approached a formidable individual whose body was 95% prosthetics.

"Fourth Uncle, I’m counting on you."

This cybernetically-enhanced powerhouse was the lynchpin of Liu Xuan’s plan—the absolute key to gathering "evidence."

A voice emerged from the sonic emitter in Liu Xinglu’s neck. "If the Si Clan makes a move, they will leave a trail. I will find the evidence."

A closer look at Liu Xinglu’s Prosthetic Body would reveal that nearly every component was S-Class.

An Implanter with a full-body S-Class Prosthetic Body was part of a major corporation’s foundational power, but under certain rules, this level of combatant was forbidden from being deployed in open battle.

Fortunately, among Liu Xinglu’s S-Class prosthetics was an S-Class Cyber Neural Synapse Implant—a component for a Cyber Hacker Prosthetic Body.

Furthermore, Liu Xinglu’s model wasn’t a so-called standard or flagship edition; it was an Immortal Prosthetic Body.

With no X-Class cyber network equipment to restrain him, Liu Xinglu was the one true God controlling the cyber network in Greenfield City.

...

Liu’s Heavy Industries, Greenfield City Branch, Top-Floor Venue.

Lin Qi "saw" the plane.

’Fuck! This isn’t the Twin Towers, and they’re still going to crash into it?’

He wanted to curse out loud, but Lin Qi suppressed the urge and ran a quick calculation in his head.

’This plane... it won’t kill me when it crashes.’

’But there’s someone on the aircraft’s wing. An Extraordinary Professional.’

’Time to figure out how to play dead!’